This paper explores how élites and non-élites in ancient Greece might have perceived agrarian landscapes. On the basis of several archaeological case studies and a wide range of comparative ethnographic and historic material, it is argued that the archaeological evidence for land division in early Greece reflects agrarian rather than ‘urban’ ideologies. The widely accepted belief that ‘colonization’ reflects a shortage of land is likely to be wrong. Rather, there were practical limits on the amount of land individual households could have cultivated without additional resources of labour.